Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Women to Drive, a battle for dignity

Saudi women rights activist Manal al-Sharif speaks with ANSAmed, a European Union news source, a brief story about the women driving issue. A link to the story is here, and is pasted in below.

(ANSAmed) - ROME, OCTOBER 8 - She's young, beautiful and
feisty, and she is the founder of the Saudi Women To Drive campaign, which is
part of a larger action called My Right To Dignity: her name is Manal Al Sharif,
and ANSAmed interviewed her in Italy, where she attended the International
magazine journalism festival in Ferrara.

She reached the festival at the
wheel of a car, from the UN High Commission for Human Rights in Geneva, for the
right to drive in her home country of Saudi Arabia is symbolic of the larger
issue of full citizenhood.

''In my country, a man comes of age at 18, a
woman never: she needs permission from a male guardian for every life choice,
from studying abroad to looking for a job,'' Sharif told ANSAmed. And, while no
law expressly forbids Saudi women to drive, they are de facto banned from
getting behind the wheel.

The motor registry software does not issue
licenses to female drivers, and women have in the past been sentenced to
flogging for being caught at the wheel.

Having become famous for posting
a YouTube video in which she is seen driving a car, having started a national
women's mobilization and paid for it with nine days in jail, Sharif sued Saudi
authorities. That legal battle has been stuck in a civil court for six months,
although the floggings appear to have stopped, Sharif pointed out.

On
June 17, the second anniversary of her campaign, which has thousands of Facebook
and Twitter supporters, Sharif co-signed an appeal to King Abdullah, in which
she points out that denying women the right to drive is ''based on customs and
traditions that do not come from God.'' Sharif, married and with a child, now
lives in Dubai, from where she continues to fight her battle for women's rights
in her native Saudi Arabia. A country which, she points out, is a signatory to
the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
(CEDAW), adopted in 1979 by the UN General Assembly. (ANSAmed).

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About Me

I'm a freelance writer based in Maine. I lived in Saudi Arabia for many years. I studied Arabic in college eons ago and married my college sweetheart, a fellow Arabic student. My first novel, A CARAVAN OF BRIDES, is set in Saudi Arabia. I'm working on my second novel while writing feature stories about the Middle East. I am also the co-founder and Administrative Director of the Arabic Music Retreat.